Deliverance from the Self-Life

The self-life. The self-life is precisely what we are called to give up when we become Christians—to instead live for God (the God-life!), to serve others. Over and over again I have seen my tendency to be selfish. I don’t think I ever doubted that, but I do recall the time when God did major renovation in my heart on this issue.



It was my second semester at BJU. The first semester had been hard, but good. I had a wonderful Christmas break…and I did not want to go back. But I went, because I knew it was the will of God, and in my heart-of-hearts, I knew I really did want to go, just a little. What followed were some very intense weeks of God revealing my heart to me. It was pretty much what A.W. Tozer described in the third chapter of The Pursuit of God. (In fact, next to one of the ending paragraphs I wrote simply, “Spring 2008.”)


The chapter is about “Removing the Veil”—what hinders our intimate fellowship with God.

With the veil removed by the rending of Jesus’ flesh, with nothing on God’s side to prevent us from entering, why do we tarry without? Why do we consent to abide all our days just outside the Holy of Holies and never enter at all to look upon God?

He explains in the next paragraph:

What is it? What but the presence of a veil in our hearts? … It is the veil of our fleshly, fallen nature living on, unjudged within us, uncrucified and unrepudiated. It is the close-woven veil of the self-life which we have never truly acknowledged, of which we have been secretly ashamed…an enemy to our lives and an effective block to our spiritual progress. …


It is woven of the fine threads of the self-life… They are not something we do, they are something we are, and therein lies both their subtlety and their power.


To be specific, the self-sins are self-righteousness, self-pity, self-confidence, self-sufficiency, self-admiration, self-love and a host of others like them.

A host of others like them?? I read that list and when I came to that, I thought, “That list is discouraging enough without saying there’s more!” We each have our own “self-issues.” Self-righteousness? Yes. Self-pity? Yes. Self-love? Definitely. Tozer goes on to say that

They dwell too deep within us and are too much a part of our natures to come to our attention till the light of God is focused upon them.

That semester God did a lot of focusing. He said no. He said no again. I felt left out and left behind. I was lonely. I watched God say yes to others when He said no to me. Not much of Laura Luann was very pretty…but I was seeing that when Christ shines through Laura Luann—it is a beautiful picture. But the dying itself is not a pretty business. In Ephesians 4, Paul compares our old and new selves when he says to:


"put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness" (Eph 4:22-24).


Jesus reminds us that this putting off means a dying:


"If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it” (Luke 9:23-24).


Jesus died on the cross…but then He rose victoriously. That’s the same idea He has for us—the dying of self and sin followed by the victory of people conformed to the image of Christ. Tozer ends the chapter by writing,

The cross is rough and deadly, but it is effective. It does not keep its victim hanging there forever. There comes a moment when its work is finished and the suffering victim dies. After that is resurrection glory and power, and the pain is forgotten for joy that the veil is taken away and we have entered in actual spiritual experience the presence of the living God.

Do we value God and our fellowship with Him enough to be willing to go through the dying process? Self and Christ cannot reign together. The “suffering victim” of Spring 2008 died, but there is a daily cross, and she’s died many more time since then.

And there’s still more to come.

From prayer that asks that I may be

Sheltered from winds that beat on Thee,

From fearing when I should aspire,

From faltering when I should climb higher,

From silken self, O Captain, free

Thy soldier who would follow Thee.

From subtle love of softening things,

From easy choices, weakenings,

(Not thus are spirits fortified,

Not this way went the Crucified)

From all that dims Thy Calvary

O Lamb of God, deliver me.

Give me the love that leads the way,

The faith that nothing can dismay,

The hope no disappointments tire,

The passion that will burn like fire;

Let me not sink to be a clod:

Make me Thy Fuel, Flame of God.

--Amy Wilson Carmichael